Freak Show

I was recently watching an interview on Charlie Rose with the authors of a new book called, "The Way To Win: Taking the White House in 2008".  Among other things, authors Mark Halperin and John Harris posit that the old "Nixon Rules" of campaigning, i.e., run to the left or right during the primaries and run to the center during the general election, have gone from a recipe for success to a recipe for certain failure.  The most important change since that era has been the emergence of the freakshow - an amalgam of media outlets and personalities in fierce competition with one another for ratings in an increasingly blurb-based culture.  Since the "gotcha" can attract the attention of channel and net surfers more easily than the indepth analysis of a candidate's platform, the contradictions inherent to the Nixon strategy will be jumped upon like "sharks on chum" (to paraphrase Halperin).  Such contradictions have become the building blocks with which campaigns construct a story about the opponent that the more thoughtful (or at least literate) of the freakshow's outlets might pick up on as familiar to their viewers/listeners/readers. 

According to Halperin/Harris, as there is no longer a way for candiates to speak out of both sides of their mouths without drawing the attention of the freakshow, the successful candidate will stick with a solid, if somewhat narrow set of policy positions that will avoid offending their base, while simultaneously wooing swing votes.  But what does this mean for the viscious political environment we are now faced with? 

More to come...